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It is very odd that they'd go for MP, and I wonder whether it's a good match for Ancel's talents. i'm not too bothered about the switch in genre, because I mainly enjoyed BG&E for its personality and less so for its specific gameplay, although if this ends up feeling like a reskin of Far Cry 3, I'll be miffed.

Ancel's historically (boy do I feel odd using that word here) been best at strongly authored experiences, because he brings them his own brand of unique personality. It looks like he's still doing that here, but there's a big (unavoidably big, frankly, if the logistics of this thing were accurately described in the article) risk of it being watered down by the sort of large-scale busywork they mention. Maybe it'll be okay and turn out to be a successful GTA in space thing, but it's early days yet, and that's another odd thing to be saying regarding a game we were teased 9 years ago.

Not necessarily. The gameplay of a metroidvania/Zelda-like game can be very different from an open world sandbox game, especially with multiplayer content. And this talk about procedural generation and whatnot makes me very wary.

Or, to put it in another way, it's the gradual opening up of the world I liked, not that I could go anywhere. It makes you feel like you're conquering the world bit by bit, like in Dark Souls, not just wandering around looking for things to happen, like you would in Skyrim.

Not disagreeing, that's what I mean. It depends on whether you can expand that sort of systemic mechanics-based exploration with any amount of finesse to a procgen universe or not -- logic points to no, but we'll see what Ancel comes up with despite this... interesting direction he's most likely been forced to take at the behest of other people in charge.

Well, the potential is there -- if they manage to make the world as interesting as the trailer seems to imply and if there's room for character growth and a story arc.

BG&E was kind of like a coming of age story, and besides rebelling against authority and experiencing loss and all that jazz, learning about the world was also a huge part of it, which the game design supported nicely. You were expanding your horizons both figuratively and literally. Theoretically, there's no reason they couldn't do the same with a band of pirates in an open world, but what I'm afraid of is that they are going to Assassins Creed it up, for the lack of a better phrase, with something like gameplay where the exploration consists of pressing forward on your gamepad and taking in the sights.

Although I know it has a cult following, I get the impression that both Ubi and Ancel think the IP is far more legendary than it actually is. They talk like they're creating Half Life 3 or something, as if we all should all just sit quietly while they create their masterpiece. It's possible that by the time they actually finish, the original fans won't even care anymore.

That said, I wouldn't mind replaying the original sometime soon - looks like the HD version is console only? Probably will have to dial it up on the PS3.

Although I know it has a cult following, I get the impression that both Ubi and Ancel think the IP is far more legendary than it actually is. They talk like they're creating Half Life 3 or something, as if we all should all just sit quietly while they create their masterpiece. It's possible that by the time they actually finish, the original fans won't even care anymore.

If BG&E2 has as little in common with BG&E as it sounds, there's no particular reason for the fans of the first game to care about it.

I mostly just don't understand why they decided to go with a cliffhanger ending originally, if no one had any enthusiasm for continuing that story.

I mostly just don't understand why they decided to go with a cliffhanger ending originally, if no one had any enthusiasm for continuing that story.

The game bombed hard sales wise back in the day. I really doubt that Western AAA publishers make their games expecting them to be flops most of the time. (There's always exceptions of course like Activision's The Walking Dead: Survival Instinct and Blood Drive; Edios' Shellshock 2: Blood Trails.)

Well, the last time I tried to play it on PC, it was very awkward to control with a keyboard and mouse. It has no controller support whatsoever. In the end, I had to use an external program to map keyboard keys to my controller, but it was still wonky, since the movement isn't analog. So, in the end I had to run the game in an emulator. And this is not even mentioning the Steam version which had a host of weird problems on its own.

It's an extremely lazy port and if you have access to a console version, I don't see any reason to not prefer it to the PC port.

Yes, I suppose it's quite likely we would have gotten a continuation at the time if it had sold well.

The situation has evidentially changed over the years, though. Admittedly the HD release of the original might have been a low-risk way to get more profit from the existing game more than anything else; but they're making a sequel now, and it sounds like it's the original creative lead heading up the development, so they finally have the opportunity to continue the story... and decide not to.

I guess I'm confused about who their expected audience is, because seemingly this isn't targeted at the fans of the original game, yet they're limiting their audience by presenting it as a sequel. The audience seems to be "people who enjoyed BG&E but don't mind if BG&E2 is something completely different which (probably?) ignores the cliffhanger they were left at 15 years ago" and "people who didn't play BG&E but are interested in a sequel to BG&E". And I'm not saying either of those sets of people are necessarily small; but they must surely be smaller than the potential audience for a game without this branding attached, if this isn't actually going to be like BG&E.

I'd say they've spent the past nine years waiting for console tech to be able to support their engine. If this isn't a total bullshot reel, then from a purely technical standpoint BG&E2 is going to be fucking amazing.

It does look like a lot of fun already but can't help but worry that they might be trying to bite off a little too much. Just hope that it won't require another 9 years to fill in the rest of the content.

Looking at it from purely what they've shown, they've only started implementing the high concept. It's very pretty, and the tech looks seriously impressive if they're actually getting procedural sunsets via light scattering across atmosphere distribution and composition; plus the meteor strike looked very cool too, if not particularly, ah, impactful. Progressive planet scars over time, I imagine? Nice.

But multiple populated planets with actual architecture to explore combined with interlinked events and economies, actual story chains and the like -- well, it's a long way off. Let's not fool ourselves.

On a side note, I wonder what the specs were for the PC Ancel was using for that walkthrough. It must've been a beast.